Share or Get Left Behind: The Future of Business Relies on Open, Connected Data

Earlier this month, a few members of the Box team attended the Hollywood IT Summit put on by MESA Alliance. We were lucky enough to listen to Gil Elbaz, Founder and CEO of Factual, speak about the benefits of open data. The focal point of the talk was building an API and a set of metadata to enable data sharing between companies in the entertainment industry – by making data more available, Gil argued, companies will innovate in ways they’ve never imagined. And because of the way markets work, increased transparency will enable suppliers to understand where there is a market need, where competitors are located and where new opportunities might arise. The result: More commerce and more flourishing businesses.

While an open, collaborative environment is certainly better for employees, companies and entire industries ultimately reap the real benefits: Faster innovation, the cross-pollenization of ideas, and ultimately, economic growth. Without information sharing, markets will move too quickly for businesses to keep up. And customers will stop caring long before you’re able to get something into the market that solves their problems.

This type of collaboration requires employees share from anywhere – even across organizational firewalls. Old on premise systems certainly don’t enable this kind of open collaboration. That’s why our team is so focused on making it incredibly easy for people to collaborate and share content from anywhere, on any device.

Over the past few years, consumers have even started taking charge by driving device adoption – both at home and in the workplace. People no longer adopt solutions because they’re being told to. Workers and consumers alike use apps, devices and platforms that make them more productive – and get rid of solutions that don’t.

So what will happen to businesses that don’t empower their employees by making sharing easy? They’ll lose their competitive edge, be less innovative and ultimately, cease to exist. The era of open, connected data is here – don’t get left behind.